If we assume that the meaningof until includes an ‘implicit orientation time’ ⫺ until means ‘until the time that’ ⫺ the use of the past tense is explained naturally: it represents the si
Trang 1he would wait until his wife {arrived / *would arrive} If we assume that the meaning
of until includes an ‘implicit orientation time’ ⫺ until means ‘until the time that’ ⫺
the use of the past tense is explained naturally: it represents the situation time of John’s wife’s arrival as T-simultaneous with the implicit orientation time
8.28.1 The concept of relative past tense is also necessary to account for the obligatory use of the preterite in the adverbial time clauses of examples like the following:
Maud knew that John would leave before Mary {arrived / *would arrive}.
As noted in 14.4.2, thebefore-clause in this example is interpreted as
‘not-yet-factual at the binding time’, more specifically as not-yet-‘not-yet-factual at the situation time of the head clause: what Maud knew was that Mary would not yet have arrived when John left The same applies to theuntil-clause in the following
ex-ample:
Maud expected that John would wait until Mary {arrived / *would arrive} [but she
couldn’t know that John would be waiting in vain because Mary wouldn’t make it
to the meeting-place that day.].(The until-clause has a similar ‘not-yet-factual at the head clause-situation time’ interpretation)
The obligatory use of the past tense in such time clauses is generally looked upon as puzzling It seems illogical that (unlike many other languages) English does not allow the use of the conditional tense (which represents a situation time as T-posterior to an orientation time in a past domain) to refer to a situation time which must actually be interpreted as W-posterior to an orienta-tion time in a past domain However, these data do not really present a prob-lem if one knows that the temporal conjunctionsbefore, until, after, since and when resemble the phrasal conjunction by the time that in that they are
inter-preted as ‘{before / until / after / since / at} the time that’ (see 8.2.1) Diachron-ically, the present-day conjunctionsbefore, until, after, and since have actually
developed from prepositional phrases of this kind The fact that we must use
arrived rather than would arrive in the above examples shows that, in an
inten-sional context, the situation time of abefore / until-clause has to be represented
as T-simultaneous with the orientation time that is implicit in the semantics of the conjunction (and which is explicit in the conjunction by the time that) A
comparison of the following sentences renders it easier to see this constraint: Johnleft before Mary arrived.
John decided he would wait until his wife {arrived / *would arrive}.
The first example is interpreted as meaning that both situations actualized in the order indicated by before Because of the factuality of the two situations,
Trang 2the two preterites are analysed as absolute preterites in our theory (As
ex-plained in 14.5.1, not all before-clauses use a relative tense Those that
repre-sent a situation as a past fact use the absolute past tense.) The implication that
Mary had not yet arrived when John left is an entailment but does not alter
the fact that the two situations are represented as factual
In the second example, decided creates an intensional world in which the
situation of John’s wife’s arrival is expected to actualize The form arrived
cannot be an absolute past tense here because the speaker does not represent
the arrival as a past fact: it is quite possible that John’s wife did not actually
show up In other words, by using an absolute past tense a speaker always
represents a situation as factual from his point of view, i e from the temporal
standpoint of t0 Such a reading, which is given to both past tense forms in
John left before Mary arrived, is a ‘transparent’ (‘de re’) interpretation By
contrast, inJohn decided he would wait until his wife arrived, arrived receives
an ‘opaque’ (‘de dicto’) reading The arrival only forms part of John’s
inten-sional world, not of the speaker’s transparent world In this world, the arrival
is not-yet-factual at the time when John decided to wait In sum, arrived is
now a relative tense form receiving a ‘not-yet-factual at the binding time’
inter-pretation but no factual interinter-pretation (Unlike English, Germanic languages
like Dutch or German use the conditional tense to express this not-yet-factual
interpretation In archaic English, until his wife should arrive could be used
similarly instead ofuntil his wife arrived The following is an authentic
exam-ple from the Bible:
His lord was angry, and delivered him to the tormentors, until he should pay all
that was due to him
8.28.2 What we learn from the impossibility of using would arrive in the
second example [John decided to wait until his wife arrived] is that the
situa-tion time of anuntil-clause cannot be bound indirectly (by means of the use of
the conditional tense) by the situation time which also binds the situation time
of the head clause of the until-clause: the situation time of the arrival cannot
be represented as T-posterior to the situation time of decided The only
pos-sibility is for the situation time of the until-clause to be bound directly by the
orientation time which is implicit in the meaning of until (and which is
lexi-calized asthe time in the paraphrase ‘until the time that’) Since the relation in
question is T-simultaneity⫺ ‘until the time that his wife arrived’ means ‘until
the time of his wife’s arrival’ ⫺ a relative past tense form must be used for
this (Remember that the relative past tense is the only tense that can be used
to express T-simultaneity with an orientation time in a past domain.) That the
past tense in question cannot be an absolute past tense is furthermore clear
from the fact that an absolute preterite can only express one relation, viz
Trang 3T-anteriority to t0,19 and from the fact that the orientation time that is implicit
inuntil, as well as the situation time that is represented as T-simultaneous with
it, can actually be W-posterior to t0:
Yesterday evening John decided he would wait in the hotel until his wife arrived
today [She has not arrived yet, but she will in a couple of hours.]
8.28.3 It is worth noting that the principle prohibiting the use ofwould arrive
in John decided he would wait until his wife {arrived / *would arrive} also
underlies the obligatory use of the present tense (as ‘pseudo-absolute’ tense expressing T-simultaneity⫺ see 9.17) in the post-present counterparts of these examples and in similar sentences with abefore-clause:
John has decided he will wait until his wife {arrives / *will arrive}.
John will wait until his wife {arrives / *will arrive}.
John will leave before Mary {arrives / *will arrive}.
The present tense is used because before / until mean ‘before / until the time
that’ and the tense of the time clauses has to express T-simultaneity with this implicit orientation time Using the absolute tense form will arrive is not
al-lowed: an adverbial before / until-clause cannot establish a post-present
do-main of its own There is a clear parallelism between the ungrammaticality of
will arrive here and the ungrammaticality of would arrive in John decided he would wait until his wife {arrived / *would arrive} In both cases the situation
time of the time clause can only be T-related to the orientation time which is implicit in the meaning of the conjunction Using will arrive or would arrive
would T-relate it to another orientation time (In the case of will arrive the
situation time would be T-related directly to t0.)
John said that Mary was ill allows a reading in which Mary was ill at the time of John’s
utterance and one in which Mary was ill at some time preceding John’s utterance Our claim that these two interpretations are a matter of ambiguity (tense structure) and not vagueness (W-interpretation) is confirmed by Lakoff’s well-known test to distinguish between ambiguity and vagueness
19 As in all the arguments given here in support of the notion of relative past tense, we are disregarding special uses of past tense forms, as inHe was leaving the next day, If you did that tomorrow …, If only I was a girl!, etc By ‘absolute past tense form’ we always
mean a tense form that locates a situation time in the past time-sphere and in doing so represents it as T-anterior to t
Trang 48.29.1 The above distinction between T-simultaneity and W-simultaneity is a
distinction between semantic meaning and W-interpretation (The former is
exclusively a question of semantics, whereas the latter is a question of
pragmat-ics as well as semantpragmat-ics: the interpretation of a clause depends not only on the
semantics of the construction used and the lexical meaning of the constituents
but also on pragmatic factors, such as the (linguistic and extralinguistic)
context in which the clause is used, our pragmatic knowledge of the world,
and the generally accepted principles of conversation.) The distinction between
T-simultaneity and W-simultaneity is therefore related to the distinction
be-tween (semantic) ambiguity and (pragmatic) vagueness A sentence like John
said that Mary was ill clearly allows two W-interpretations: (a) Mary was ill
at the time of John’s utterance, and (b) Mary was ill at some time preceding
John’s utterance (Out of context, interpretation (a) is the normal one; reading
(b) can be brought out, for example, by the addition of a time adverbial, as in
[John said that] Mary was ill [when the plane landed].) Now, there are only
two theoretical ways of explaining the fact that there can be two
W-inter-pretations The first is to say that on either reading was is an absolute past
tense form, i e that like said, was expresses no more than that its situation
time lies in the past time-sphere The two readings of the sentence then follow
from the fact that the two situation times may or may not be interpreted as
W-simultaneous with each other: the intended reading will be clear from the
context This explanation is based on the notion of pragmatic vagueness, not
semantic ambiguity The second explanation relies on the claim that was is
semantically ambiguous between an absolute past tense form and a relative
past tense form Because of the different semantics of these two tenses⫺ they
express different temporal structures⫺ this explanation is based on the notion
of semantic ambiguity, not pragmatic vagueness
8.29.2 We can show that the semantic explanation is the correct one by using
a well-known test for ambiguity The rationale of this test is as follows Take
a sentence which yields two interpretations Add a clause expressing similarity
and involving a verbal pro-form, for example and so {did / was} Bill If the
two interpretations of the initial sentence are a matter of ambiguity, the clause
with the pro-form will have to receive the same interpretation as the sentence
to which it is added If this is not the case, i e if the initial sentence and the
added clause allow a different interpretation, there is vagueness but not
ambi-guity For example:
John likes Bill more than Mary, and so does Peter
The sentence John likes Bill more than Mary is syntactically (and therefore
also semantically) ambiguous between two meanings:
John likes Bill more than he likes Mary
John likes Bill more than Mary likes Bill
Trang 5As predicted, the added clause inJohn likes Bill more than Mary, and so does Peter must receive the same reading as the first clause That is, of the following
four readings, only the first two are possible interpretations of the sentence: John likes Bill more than he likes Mary, and Peter also likes Bill more than he likes Mary
John likes Bill more than Mary likes Bill, and Peter also likes Bill more than Mary likes Bill
John likes Bill more than he likes Mary, and Peter also likes Bill more than Mary likes Bill
John likes Bill more than Mary likes Bill, and Peter also likes Bill more than he likes Mary
When applying this test toJohn said that Mary was ill, we find that the double
interpretation of this sentence is due to semantic ambiguity:
John said Mary was ill, and so did Bill
Because John and Bill may or may not have spoken at the same time, the following are the possible interpretations of this sentence:
John said [at t1] that Mary was ill [at t1], and Bill also said [at t1] that Mary was ill [at t1].(In this case John and Bill spoke at the same time.)
John said [at t1] that Mary was ill [at t1], and Bill said [at t2] that Mary was ill [at
t2]’.)(In this case John and Bill spoke at different times.)
John said Mary had been ill [at some earlier time], and Bill also said that Mary had been ill [at the earlier time John had in mind]
John said Mary had been ill [at some earlier time], and Bill also said that Mary had been ill [at some earlier time different from the earlier time which John had in mind] (Because and so did Bill expresses similarity, this reading is less likely than the previous one.)
The sentenceJohn said Mary was ill, and so did Bill does not yield the
follow-ing readfollow-ings:
*John said [at t1] that Mary was ill [at t1], and Bill also said [at t1 or at t2] that Mary had been ill [at some time earlier than either t1or t2]
*John said [at t1] that Mary had been ill [at some time earlier than t1], and Bill also said [at t1] that Mary was ill [at t1]
*John said [at t1] that Mary had been ill [at some time earlier than t1], and Bill also said [at t2] that Mary was ill [at t2]
These sentences are actually ungrammatical becausealso requires that the two
parts should have similar meanings, which they do not
The above data accord with the view that the two readings ofMary was ill
in John said that Mary was ill result from semantic ambiguity: the form was
Trang 6is ambiguous between two meanings Readings resulting from vagueness are
not subject to the restriction observed above This is clear from the following:
Bill was as ill as John was
In this example (which also expresses similarity) both verb forms are absolute
past tense forms Because both forms thus relate their situation time directly
to t0, the temporal relation between the two situation times remains vague
(unspecified): we do not know from Bill was as ill as John was whether Bill
was ill while, before or after John was ill It is therefore predictable that the test
showswas to be vague rather than ambiguous between two temporal readings:
Bill was as ill as John was, and so was Mary
Nothing whatsoever is implied here concerning the relative times of the three
illnesses Whichever of the three interpretations (viz Bill was ill {while /
be-fore / after} John was) we assign to the first part, all three interpretations (viz
‘Mary was ill {while / before / after} John was’) remain possible in the second
(⫽ added) part
8.29.3 The test for semantic ambiguity vs vagueness that we have used here
is due to Lakoff (1970) It has been argued in the literature that there are
sentence types in which this test is not reliable However the kind of sentence
to which we have applied the test is not one of the problematic cases The fact
that the test works well in cases of indirect speech is further illustrated by
the following:
John will tell the chairman that Marywas too ill to attend the meeting.
This sentence is semantically two-way ambiguous in that Mary’s illness may
be taken to be T-anterior either to t0 or to the post-present time of John’s
speaking (i e the ‘pseudo-t0’ ⫺ see 9.17.1) In the following sentences the
reading to be selected is each time determined by the context:
[Mary couldn’t attend yesterday’s meeting because she was ill When I see him this
afternoon] I will tell the chairman that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting.
(Mary’s illness is anterior to t 0 This means that was is an absolute preterite.)
[If Mary becomes ill, she won’t be able to attend Saturday’s meeting In that case I
will speak to the chairman after the meeting.] I will tell him that Marywas too ill
to attend the meeting.(Mary’s illness is anterior to the pseudo-t 0 but posterior to t 0
This means that was is a ‘pseudo-absolute’ tense form (see 9.17.1⫺3) which actually
functions as a relative tense expressing T-anteriority to the central situation time of
the post-present domain.)
If we build a sentence similar to John said Mary was ill, and so did Bill, we
get the following:
John will tell the chairman that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting, and so
will Bill
Trang 7Of the four theoretically possible interpretations, only the first two are accept-able:
John will tell the chairman that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at a time anterior to t0], and Bill will also tell the chairman that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at a time anterior to t0]
John will tell the chairman [at t1] that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at a time anterior to t1but posterior to t0], and Bill will also tell the chairman [at t1or
at t2] that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at a time anterior to t1or t2but posterior to t0]
*John will tell the chairman [at t1] that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at
a time anterior to t0], and Bill will also tell the chairman [at t1or at t2] that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at a time anterior to t1or t2but posterior to t0]
*John will tell the chairman [at t1] that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at
a time anterior to t1 but posterior to t0], and Bill will also tell the chairman that Mary was too ill to attend the meeting [at a time anterior to t0]
Here too, the test works well In this case it proves that there is a semantic difference between an absolute preterite (meaning ‘the situation time is past relative to t0’) and a ‘pseudo-absolute’ preterite (meaning ‘the situation time is past relative to a post-present pseudo-t0’)
8.30 Argument 8: choosing between the progressive and
the nonprogressive form
InJohn said that he was writing a book, the use of the progressive form is compulsory
if we want to express the idea that at the time of his utterance John was engaged in the (telic) situation of writing a book In the same way as we cannot say *I write a book, we cannot say *John said that he wrote a book (on the relevant interpretation).
This can only be explained if we posit the existence of a relative past tense meaning
‘The situation time is T-simultaneous (⫽ strictly coinciding) with an orientation time
in a past domain’ Since the time of saying (which functions as T-binding time) is (nearly) punctual, we need to represent the much longer situation of writing a book as homogeneous (by using the progressive), so that the full situation can be conceived of
as consisting of representative subparts, one of which has the same restricted duration and temporal location as John’s utterance and can therefore function as the time of the predicated situation
8.30.1 Barring special uses of the present tense (as in historical speech, sum-maries, etc., where there is a ‘shift of temporal perspective’ from the past to